All Over Albany

Items tagged with 'St. Rose'

We got a chance to stop in at the Esther Massry Gallery at Saint Rose to catch a look at Common Side Effects, the exhibition by Lisa Hoke that's there right now. It's a series of sculptures, murals, and collages made up of product packaging.

Exhibition blurbage:

Quirky, intensely colored sculptures, giant wall murals and small collages are made from cast-off, familiar packaging reclaimed from our mass-produced, consumerist culture. Formerly trash bin detritus, these intricate and labor-intensive creations add gravitas to an ethos of excess and waste. The exhibition features a large-scale, suspended sculpture constructed in the vertical gallery.

Nancy Princenthal, writer, critic and contributing editor of Art in America, states "The ready-made graphics of her materials are meant by their commercial producers to be seductive, and Hoke only bumps up their appeal, organizing them into tapering cones, telescoping cups, fanned plates and pinwheeling spirals of the most dizzying allure." (Excerpted from 2015 essay on Lisa Hoke's exhibition "Attention Shoppers," published by Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York.)

The pieces are vibrantly colorful, and they draw you in as your eye picks out all the various types of packaging involved.

Common Side Effects is on display through December 4 in the Esther Massry Gallery, which is in the Massry Center building (1002 Madison Ave). The small exhibit's worth a stop if you're in the neighborhood.

US Attorney Preet Bharara will be at Saint Rose October 6 for an event titled "Bribery or Just Access to Elected Officials: Tawdry Tales of Ferraris, Rolexes and Ball Gowns." Bharara will be part of a panel discussion that will include:

Bharara is the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It's not a stretch to say that he's has had as much influence as anyone on New York State government over the past year, with his office winning convictions of both Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, former leaders of the state Assembly and Senate.

The Saint Rose event is Thursday, October 6 at 5:30 pm in the Lally School forum space (1009 Madison Ave). It's free and open to the public -- but pre-registration is required: preskaevent@gmail.com.

The full-time faculty at the College of Saint Rose issued a no-confidence vote in college president Carolyn Stefanco Wednesday. The vote stems from the college's move to cut 23 full-time tenure and tenure-track faculty positions in December, along with eliminating a range of academic programs.

The org representing faculty said 158 of approximately 200 eligible faculty cast votes -- 120 for "no confidence," 35 against, and three abstained. The result will be delivered to the college's board of trustees this Friday along with a petition calling for Stefanco to rescind the cuts or resign.

It sounds like the college administration knew this was a likely outcome. Leading up to Wednesday Stefanco gave interviews indicating her intent to the stay the course regardless of the vote. And after the vote the college issued a statement from Stefanco that read in part:

While some faculty members embrace and support constructive change at Saint Rose, others resist it. Regardless of our personal feelings, we share a solemn responsibility to make the changes necessary to meet the changing needs of our students.

I will proudly continue to lead Saint Rose, working alongside our trustees, staff, administration and those members of the faculty who support the efforts to improve our financial standing, increase our enrollment and chart a course for a strong future.

Back in December when it announced the cuts, Saint Rose cited a $9 million deficit and a 16 percent decline in enrollment since 2008. (For some context, the college had a $121 million budget in 2013, according to its 990 form.) It said about four percent of the college's 4,400 students were enrolled in the programs that would be eliminated (12 programs had no students).

A native of Hudson, NY, Chloe Caldwell is the author of the forthcoming novella Women (SF/LD Books, 2014) and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray (Future Tense Books, 2012). Her nonfiction has appeared in Salon.com, The Rumpus, Thought Catalog, Nylon, The Nervous Breakdown, xoJane, The Frisky, The Sun, SMITH, Jewcy, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Freerange Nonfiction, The Faster Times, The Fix, and Men's Health, and has also appeared in the anthologies Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NYC (Seal Press), GIRLS? (Thought Catalog), and True Tales of Lust and Love (Soft Skull Press). She is the founder and curator of the Hudson River Loft Reading Series in Hudson, NY, and has taught Creative Writing workshops at Omega Teen Camp, The Hudson Opera House, The Independent Resource Center, and personal essay classes online through Lit Reactor.

Adjuncts at the College of Saint Rose have voted to unionize with SEIU Local 200 by a tally of 175-61. In a statement, Saint Rose said it "will work with the SEIU to address the issues concerning the adjunct faculty." [Supporters of Saint Rose Adjunct Faculty FB group] [College of Saint Rose]

Stefanco is scheduled to start the position July 1. Her selection caps an unusual transition at the college. In a surprise announcement last summer the school and former president David Szczerbacki parted ways after he had spent just one year in the role, with no mention about what caused the split. Margaret Kirwin, the school's VP for academic affairs, has been serving as interim president.

Stefanco has a PhD in history from Duke, an MA in women's history from Binghamton, and an undergrad history degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her scholarly focus has been American women's history, higher education, and international education.

The "aggressively eclectic" visiting writers series Frequency North is back for another season at St. Rose starting in September. One name that jumps out immediately on first scan of the lineup this time around: author Rick Moody.

A compressed, easy-scan version of the lineup is post jump. As in the past, FN events are free and open to the public.

But the particular focus on players of the '90s makes it clear where baseball's anti-PED hysteria comes from. It's about the boomers who are offended that better players have taken over records they believe should belong to their childhood heroes in perpetuity. The nostalgic sentimentalism that used to produce lots of drearily irritating tributes to baseball now leads to lots of drearily irritating attacks on baseball. ...

That's what the war against A-Rod is about. Not all MLB PED-users have been singled out, after all. Prominent accused users like Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, and David Ortiz aren't treated like pariahs, because they haven't broken certain iconic records or passed certain statistical benchmarks or threatened any sportswriter's right to remain a child forever. After comparing Rodriguez to a murderous gangster, Bill Madden goes on to complain about "the steroids plague that has tarnished the game's integrity and made a mockery of the home run records." In a sentence, that's what motivates the anti-PED fanatics.

Chris Thile is a young mandolin virtuoso and composer whose lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass with elements from a range of other musical traditions is giving rise to a new genre of contemporary music. With a broad outlook that encompasses progressive bluegrass, classical, rock, and jazz, Thile is transcending the borders of conventionally circumscribed genres in compositions for his own ensembles and frequent cross-genre collaborations. Although rooted in the rhythmic structure of bluegrass, his early pieces for his long-time trio, Nickel Creek, have the improvisatory feel of jazz; his current ensemble, Punch Brothers, evokes the ethos of classical chamber music even while adhering to the traditional instrumentation of the bluegrass quintet.

Szczerbacki "elected not to renew his contract as president for the 2013-2014 academic year," according to a press release, which states that he cited "personal reasons" in his letter to the board of trustees.

Prior to becoming president Szczerbacki had been CSR's provost and vice president for academic affairs, the #2 job there, starting in 2004. He succeeded Mark Sullivan, who had been the college's president for 16 years.

St. Rose says it's starting a national search for a new president. In the interim, the duties of the president's job will be shared by current provost and VP for academic affairs Margaret Kirwin and VP for finance and administration Marcus Buckley. Sullivan will also be advising. (And the school is set to get a new provost starting July 1 -- Hadi Salavitabar, former dean of the School of Business at the SUNY New Paltz.)

(crotchety old person voice) Oh, teenagers today, with their Facebook and their dubstep and their... public poetry reciting.

St. Rose is hosting the local regional finals of a national competition for high school students called Poetry Out Loud. Blurbage from CSR:

Poetry Out Loud is a national contest program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance and competition. Sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud seeks to foster the next generation of literary readers by building on the resurgence of poetry as an oral art form, as demonstrated by the slam poetry movement and the immense popularity of rap music among youth. By performing great works of literature, students can master public speaking skills, build self-confidence and learn more about their cultural heritage.

The first regional final is Thursday evening. There's another next week. And the state final is in March. All three are free and open to the public. The schedule is post jump.

The website Campus Grotto recently released its annual list of the 100 most expensive colleges -- and, as in years past, RPI, Union, and Skidmore are on the list (table above).

Both Union and Skidmore have been sliding down the list over the last few years. For 2008-2009, they were both in the top 20.

Other schools in the greater region that also made this year's list: Bard College (#10, $57,580) Bennington College (#27, $56,990), Williams College (#33, $56,770).

Of course, these totals are like the list price on a car -- not everyone ends up paying that. In fact, at a lot of schools, very few students end up paying full price because of scholarships, grants, and other financial aid.

Campus Grotto notes this school year marks a new era -- for the first time a school's total cost has exceeded $60,000. Sarah Lawrence -- #1 on the total cost chart again -- checks in at $61,236.

St. Rose, Siena, Sage, and UAlbany did not make the top 100 list. Their 2012-2013 total cost figures are post jump.

That's a lot, no matter what job you're doing. And given that the SUNY system has faced budget cuts recently, it's understandable that the figure would catch attention.

But is it too high? That's a hard question. And people are going to have different answers based on their own perspectives.

To get some context, we pulled data about presidential compensation at UAlbany, RPI, Union, Skidmore, St. Rose, Siena, and the Sage Colleges -- and broke it down to see how it compares across multiple categories.

Melissa Febos and Darin Strauss are both on this year's slate. (Fact: a black and white photo makes you look even more writerly.)

The Frequency North series at St. Rose is back for the upcoming school year -- and the slate is now out. The lineup includes fiction writers, non-fiction writers, memoirists (including a former dominatrix), poets, and the return of Pitchapoolza.

The Massry Center for the Arts at St. Rose has released its schedule for the upcoming season. The lineup includes Medeski Martin & Wood; Doc Severinsen; Ben Allison; and the return of the popular Vince Guaraldi holiday concert.

The season starts with Severinsen on September 14. Full schedule is post jump.

The new Saint Rose admissions process will continue to place the greatest weight on the level of, and success in, college preparatory courses taken in high school along with recommendations from teachers and participation in other school and outside activities. As part of the pilot, an applicant who does not submit scores will be required to complete an essay designed to help further identify the individual and provide a glimpse as to what he or she might bring to the Saint Rose community. ...

"Our own data show that there is a wider pool of students who perform well in college preparatory high school courses who we believe would be successful at Saint Rose but for the fact that they do not perform well on one four-hour standardized test. Our new policy eliminates that roadblock," said Mary Grondahl, vice president for enrollment management.

One of the interesting things in a recent NYT package about student debt is an interactive listing that includes school-by-school breakdowns of the average student debt for each school.

We were a bit surprised by the numbers from Capital Region schools (above). Even though Skidmore and Union College both have expensive sticker prices (both locally and nationally), their average graduate debt figures were among the smallest in this area -- and they had the lowest percentage of grads carrying student debt.

Contrast that to St. Rose and UAlbany. CSR had the highest average graduate debt -- with 86 percent of its graduates carrying debt. And UAlbany, though having one of the lower debt numbers probably as a result of its relatively inexpensive tuition, had by far the highest debt-to-tuition ratio.

Pitchapalooza -- sort of like the opening round of American Idol for authors -- will be at St. Rose April 15. At the event authors will get one minute to pitch their book to a panel of judges and get feedback. From the blurbage:

At Pitchapalooza, judges will help you improve your pitch, not tell you how bad it is. Judges critique everything from idea to style to potential in the marketplace and much, much more. Authors come away with concrete advice as well as a greater understanding of the ins and outs of the publishing industry. Whether potential authors pitch themselves, or simply listen to trained professionals critique each presentation, Pitchapalooza is educational and entertaining for one and all.

The judges will pick one winner and that person will get an intro to an agent or publisher.

The board of trustees at the College of Saint Rose has picked David Szczerbacki to the college's next president. Szczerbacki is currently the school's provost and vice president for academic affairs, the #2 job there.

Szczerbacki has been at St. Rose since 2004. Before that he held a similar position at Alfred University. He has a PhD in policy studies from SUNY Buffalo, and a master's degree in urban systems. He went to Gannon in Pennsylvania for undergrad, where he got a degree in political science. In the press release, the school says his professional work outside of academics has "focused on the fields of urban and regional planning, economic development, leadership training, environmental management, strategic management and organization development."

It's interesting that Szczerbacki has a background in urban planning. St. Rose has been very active in recent years developing the neighborhood around it in Albany, with a bunch ofnew buildings that have influenced the character of the area and, more recently, signage that's more clearly defined its neighborhood campus.

RPI president Shirley Ann Jackson's salary is the 7th highest in the nation among private college presidents, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education's annual salary rankings. The Chronicle reports Jackson's 2009 total compensation was $1,771,877, up 7 percent from the year before.

The average professor at RPI gets almost $154k/year in compensation, according to the Chronicle -- giving RPI an 11.5/1 president to professor pay ratio. (A few quick comparisons: the ratio is 4.7/1 at MIT, and 3.7/1 at Cal Tech.)

Said RPI's VP of strategic communications and external relations to the TU about Jackson's salary: "[it is] a reflection of her extraordinary accomplishments, and of the desire of the Board of Trustees to have her continue the comprehensive transformation at Rensselaer."

It should be quite a performance. YouTube is full of clips of the 24-year-old Wang playing -- and people completely plotzing over what they just watched. As a person commented on a clip of Wang playing an arrangement of Mozart's Turkish march backstage before a concert: "Her fingers haveï»¿ fingers." The commenter may not be wrong.

Her dress Tuesday was so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult. Had her heels been any higher, walking, to say nothing of her sensitive pedaling, would have been unfeasible. The infernal helicopters that brazenly buzz the Bowl seemed, on this night, like long-necked paparazzi wanting a good look.

Let's have a reality check for a minute. Yes, the dress is short, tight, and revealing. But in the real world -- the world outside classical music's still-prurient bubble -- this is not unusual attire for a young rising starlet in the public eye.

The incentives include zero-interest and forgivable loans for down payments and closing costs, and in some cases grants for home improvements.

If this gets more people to live in Albany, great. The city could use more homeowners (as do many of the Capital Region's other urban centers) -- as long as those people really can afford to buy a house . And if it gets more people living closer to where they work, even better -- a short commute pays off in all sorts of ways.

Highlights from the program after the jump, along with the full press release.

In this exhibition of work stretching over three decades, Bierut has recorded his work and thoughts in a series of identical notebooks dating back to 1982. Today there are more than 90 such notebooks. The exhibit presents a selection of completed pieces that are juxtaposed with an assortment of Bierut's notebooks. Viewers can make connections between original, very rough sketches and finished work and gain insight into the design process as a result.

St. Rose announced today that construction has begun on Centennial Hall, the large residence hall project on Madison Ave. The building will house has many as 224 students when it's finished. It's expected to be ready by next summer.

The situation is an interesting design and planning challenge because the St. Rose campus is the neighborhood and vice versa -- the campus is open and integrated right into Pine Hills. It's almost the inverse of UAlbany's uptown campus, which is more-or-less sealed off from the surrounding area like an office park.

Michelle Rhee at St. Rose's commencement. Apparently her daughters are not very good at soccer, but they still get trophies. This bothers her.

Commencement was this past weekend for the College of St. Rose, the University at Albany, Siena College, and the Sage Colleges. Here are four of the commencement speeches in four lines (or so):

St. Rose: former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee
"We should be striving always to be better or we will never be better. Our country needs to regain its competitive spirit." [St. Rose press release]

UAlbany: alumnus, and Wicked author, Gregory Maguire
"Stories start right out with action. Your story starts today. What will you imagine?" [TU]

Siena: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
In referring to George Bernard Shaw's remark that youth is wasted on the young: "Please prove Mr. Shaw to be wrong. You are ready for the world now and the world certainly is ready for you, and needs you." [Troy Record]

Sage Colleges:LouAnne Johnson, the teacher and author whose book became the movie Dangerous Minds
While doing an impression of the main character in her book Muchacho: "You don't get the life you got because of being lucky, or poor, or Mexican. You get it because of the way you think about yourself. Because you think you're a loser, you're going to be a loser. If you think you're going to be a success, you gotta set your intention. Like I used to be afraid of being an intellectual because I thought was going to get my ass kicked all the time. But then I figured that's only in school. When you get out of school, people don't kick your ass for being smart -- they give you money." [Sage Colleges video]

He is not a doctor. He does not dangle a pocket watch in front of me. He is what is known in the trade as a "lay hypnotist." I found -- let's call him Gary -- by Googling "hypnotism" and my hometown, "Albany, NY." His business card bears a sentiment along the lines of "hypnotism really works." The letters after his name are "CH," for "certified hypnotist." According to Dwight F. Damon, president of the National Guild of Hypnotists, there are somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 dues-paying certified hypnotists in his organization in the United States, and 12,000 worldwide in 72 countries. Hypnotism is routinely covered by HMOs; for my stand-alone hypnotism treatment, however, I pay $160 out-of-pocket for an initial visit, or a package of $295 for a three-session course of treatment.

Does it work? Well, he reports it probably has a better chance than the "man corsets" that made him feel like "a flatulent sausage."

This year in southern New Jersey, Thanksgiving will offer no shortage of family theater. My mother, holding court as reluctant matriarch, will offer backyard advice on relationships as she puffs away on her Marlboro Light 100. My cousin, who just eloped to Philadelphia with her chef co-worker, will introduce her husband for the first time. He is a Mexican-American, and it's only a matter of time before someone makes a joke in a Speedy Gonzales accent or asks about drug cartels or his green card status before they realize their faux pas. My 13-year-old nephew will play his jazz saxophone in a confined space.

Meghan Daum is the author, most recently, of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House, a memoir about real estate addiction, published in May 2010 by Knopf. Since 2005, she has been a weekly opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. That column is distributed widely to numerous newspapers across the country and in 2006 was a finalist for a National Journalism Award and the winner of the Southern California Journalism Award in column writing. Meghan is also the author of the essay collection My Misspent Youth and the novel The Quality of Life Report. She has contributed to public radio programs such as This American Life and Marketplace and her articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, Vogue, and The New York Times, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.

It starts at 7:30 pm in the the Events and Activities Center. It's free.

Next week: Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg will be appearing October 20 as part of Frequency North. He's the author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.

Hundreds of regional and national independent literary publishers will converge to sell their journals for only $2 an issue and books for $4 each. Many publishers will attend in person to meet Albany's eager readers, so don't miss this opportunity to discover literature you are unlikely to find in a single store, and meet the publishers and editors who do the real work of keeping American Literature vibrant and vital.

There will also be readings and discussions throughout the day. The fair runs from noon to 6 pm in St. Joseph's Auditorium on the CSR campus. It's free.

But, wait. There's more. The day will be capped off with an event called "Karaoke + Poetry = Fun" at Valentine's at 7 pm.

Among the details from the state auditor's Albany ghost ticket report: a former Albany cop was put on the VIP list after he complained about getting tickets while working at his job at the state Education Department -- he then racked up 573 no-fine tickets. Jerry Jennings released a statement Friday that said his administration would be working with the Common Council to "quickly adopt a corrective action plan" for the city's parking ticket system. Said mayoral candidate Corey Ellis in statement released Friday: ""This report clearly shows that Mayor Jennings' administration is incapable of properly managing the issuance and collection of parking fines, a system that should be simple and straightforward." [AOA] [TU] [CapNews9] [Ellis press release not online]

Jimmy Fallon did finally graduate from St. Rose this past weekend. During his commencement speech, he talked about how hard it was to get the college to give him his degree (he was 15 credits short after dropping out):

The Saratoga County towns that had sued to hold up the Hudson dredging over concerns about their drinking water supply have dropped their suit. The dredging project is scheduled to start this month. [Daily Gazette]

When we heard that Jimmy Fallon was going to be the commencement speaker at this year's St. Rose graduation, we thought it was a little funny (in both the ha ha and strange way) because... Fallon dropped out of St. Rose.

But CSR is on top of this -- it's awarding Fallon his degree on the same day. From the press release:

Fallon attended Saint Rose from 1992 through 1995, starting as a computer science major before switching to communications. He left just one semester shy of graduation to pursue a career in comedy in Los Angeles. Fallon earned his bachelor's degree after presenting College officials with a portfolio of his work in TV and film, satisfying the College's requirements for the outstanding credits.

Also speaking at this year's CSR graduation: pollster John Zogby. In a poll of graduating St. Rose seniors, 32 percent were happy about that, 18 percent thought Nate Silver was hotter and 50 percent said they were undecided.*

Fallon garnered attention off-stage, too. One time, at The Playdium, the closest bowling alley to campus, where Saint Rose students had gathered for community midnight bowling, he did something a lot of people may have the impulse to do, but never act on.

"All of the sudden, you see this person sprinting down the bowling lane. [Fallon] dove like a Pete Rose slide, head first, and knocked all the bowling pins over. He got up and he did a big X like he got a strike and the whole place went nuts and starts clapping," said Eaton.

As you can imagine, that didn't go over well with the alley's owners -- and they kicked him out. But Fallon managed to get the last laugh.

The manufacturer of ExtenZe claims more than 460,000 customers have bought in the neighborhood of 250 million pills. Recent campaigns tout the ExtenZe drink, and infomercials in front of the Playboy mansion feature "ExtenZe Girls" dressed in cheerleader outfits. Response, a trade magazine that covers the "direct-response ad" industry, ranked ExtenZe as the seventh-most popular campaign in 2008, beating out the Ab Rocket and the Dual Action Cleanse.

As a former hack medical journalist, I wanted to find out if ExtenZe really works. I bought 120 pills on eBay, recruited 12 thirty- and fortysomething overeducated white males, and mailed each of them a 20-inch tube filled with ten ExtenZe pills, a foot-long ruler from Staples, an informed-consent form, a survey, and what I called a Boner Diary. I advised each patient to try to have an erection each day for ten days, directing them to the YouPorn, Victoria's Secret, and American Apparel websites. Armed with an official-sounding name, the Watchful Analysis of New Growth, we were in business.

Margan's debut album, Midnight Book, is lined up for release on March 13. We've heard it -- and it's good. We could try describing the sound (Modern chamber music? Jazz-influenced orchestral pop?), but you're probably better off just heading over to MySpace and having a listen. After a couple of the dreamy tunes you'll feel like you're somewhere else.

So, let's recap. Friday night. Good music. Free.

Sounds like a plan. The show starts at 7:30. It's in St. Rose's music building, behind 1000 Madison Ave. Quintus, Slender Shoulders and Sticklips open at 6 pm.

Albany, N.Y., is an indoor tanning mecca, a hotbed of hot beds. There are more than 800 tanning salons in the greater capital region. Four-term Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings presides over ribbon-cuttings with a year-round bronze. At the historically Catholic college where I teach, students grow more preternaturally orange as winter progresses.

I have never fit in here. I was pasty-faced even for Brooklyn, and when I moved to this tanner's Valhalla I became even more freakishly white. And so, half anxious to fit in, half curious to learn the appeal, I decided to embark on an experiment in which I would join the ranks of the fake-baked to see how a deep, midwinter tan could change my life.

The network hasn't officially announced when the one-time St. Roser and Metroland receptionist will take over for Conan O'Brien, but the rumored date is March 2, 2009. And apparently The Roots will be his house band.

Turns out, when you pay a battalion of medical professionals $20,000 to help you induce a pregnancy that didn't want to happen on its own, nobody likes you. My wife and I have been called selfish and narcissistic by adoption activists. Religious zealots have condemned us as immoral manipulators of God's will. And prudes just don't want to discuss where babies come from. Every time I mention our struggle to conceive a child in an Upper East Side Petri dish, I wander into a mine field of awkwardness, discomfort and rage. I'm made to feel I've provided way more information than is socially acceptable.

According to Nester, the response around Saint Rose wasn't so warm, either:

The pitfalls are different with those who regard IVF as subverting the will of a higher power. With 12 years of Catholic school under my belt, I should have known better than to mention it in the halls of the historically Catholic college where I teach. Seems I forgot the Vatican's "Every Sperm is Sacred" doctrine that considers most IVF methods to be sinful, the unsanctioned creation of life outside the integrity of a marital union. The lapsed Catholic conspiracy theorist in me did notice, however, that fertility treatments weren't covered by our health plan.

The new Massry Center for the Arts at the College of St. Rose opened this week and it's quite the building. We got a tour yesterday and the place has some really nice spaces.

The thing that really caught our eye even before the place was even finished, though, is the way it fits into the context of the neighborhood surrounding CSR. Massry is a 46,000 square foot building, but it's relatively unassuming in both size and style from Madison Avenue. In fact, the size is almost hidden when you look at it from the street. It's like this modern building has just been discretely tucked into one of Albany's traditional neighborhoods.

Bill Koonz, an architect with Saratoga Associates, designed the Massry Center. We asked him a few questions yesterday about the thinking behind the design.

Jerry Jennings says the City of Albany may have to lay off people now that it won't be getting that $5.5 million state aid payment (and $11 million in years after). Richard Conti, the Common Council president pro temp, says big tax increase may also be necessary. The city's projected budget deficit for 2009 is more than $14 million. [TU]

There are a couple author appearances this evening at St. Rose that look interesting. The Frequency North series is bringing Darcey Steinke and Gregory Pardlo to the campus for an open-to-the-public reading.

Jimmy Fallon's career has hit a few speed bumps over the last few years. First he was the next Adam Sandler, but of course that meant being the next Adam Sandler. Then he scored a spot doing SNL's Weekend Update, but he got overshadowed by Tina Fey. And then there was that Queen Latifah Taxi movie, which has probably taken thousands of dollars in therapy to forget.

Well it looks like things may be turning around now for Jimmy. The buzz is that the Saint Rose dropout (apparently he's 15 credits short of a computer science degree) and former Metroland receptionist is on the short list for the Late Night chair when Conan takes over for Leno. (Which prompts us to daydream about what we could have done with all those tuition dollars.) Fallon's been on the list for a while now, but with the late night shuffle just one year away he's still hanging in there. And apparently he's the top choice of SNL producer Lorne Michaels, the guy who put Conan in the seat in 1993.

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